The Niranam Poets While the Manipravala poetry flourished
as a diversion from the mainstream, the tradition set up by Cheeraman
of Ramacharitam and the more enlightened among the anonymous
folk poets was resumed and replenished by three writers commonly
referred to as Niranam poets. The Bhakti school was thus revived,
and in the place of the excessive sensuality and eroticism of
the Manipravala poets, the seriousness of the poetic
vocation was reasserted by them.

It
is believed that they all belonged to the same Kannassa family
and that Madhava Panikkar and Sankara Panikkar were the unless
of Rama Panikkar, the youngest of the three. They lived between
1350 and 450 A.D. and made valuable contribution to the Pattu
school. Madhava Panikkar wrote a condensed Malayalam translation
of Bhagavad Gita, aperhaps the first ever translation of that
classic into any modern Indian language. Sankara Panikkars's
main work is Bharatamala, a masterly condensation of Mahabharatam,
is also the first major work of its kind in Malayalam. The greatest
of the three is of course Rama Panikkar, the author of Ramayanam,
Bhartam, Bhagavatam and Sivarathri Mahatmyam. Kannassa Ramayanam
and Kannassa Bharatam are the most important of these Niranam
works. Rama Panikkar's Ramayanam is an important link between
Cheeraman's Ramacharitam, Ayyappilli Asan's Ramakathappattu
and Ezhuthachan's Adhytma Ramayanam. They bear eloquent testimony
to the continuing popularity of the Ramayana story in Kerala.
Together they constitute the strong bulwark of the Bhakti movement
which enabled the Malayalis to withstand and resist the onslaught
of foreign cultures. The Dravidianization of Aryan mythology
and philosophy was their joint achievement, coming in the wake
of the heroic effort of Sankaracharya, who wrote only in Sanskrit.
The central native tradition of Malayalam poetry has its most
significant watershed in the works of the Niranam poets. Their
success led to the gradual replacement of the Manipravala cult
of worldliness and sensual revelry by an indigenous poetics
of high seriousness. One step forward from the Niranam poets
will take us to Cherusseri and his Krishnagatha; two steps together
will land us in the company of Kerala's greatest poet Thunchathu
Ezhuthachan. The centrality of Niranam Rama Panikkar is of vital
concern to any conscientious literary historian of Malayalam.
The subordination of the descriptive and the narrative elements
to the controlling theme is a feature of Rama Panikkar's poetic
style. The killing of Thataka in the Balakanda of Kannassa Ramayanam
is disposed of in one verse which helps to preserve the dramatic
tension of the action.

Came
she like a gigantic blue cloud,
shouting with frightening fury,
Wearing garlands of blood-dripping intestines
bearing her crescent-white tusks,
But the leader of mankind woke up to anger
and smashing her magic witchcraft
With arrows shot, saluted the rishi
and killer her at his command.

Lakshman's furious threat to Tara when Sugriva failed to expedite
the quest for Sita is another eloquent example:

Tara,
your husband does not consider
what is good and what is bad without delay.
He had said, with the approach of summer
he would search for Devi without fail.
We waited so long upon that word
and then he has forgotten all that
Blind and stupid with drunkenness,
knowing neither day or night.

Ulloor has said that Rama Panikkar holds the same position in
Malayalam literature that Spenser does in English literature.
His command over complex rhythms, his attention to sensuous,
concrete details, his power of phrasing and perfect control
over mythological material seem to lend support to this view.